Something in the Water Read Online Free PDF

in this weather.
    ‘Is it safe to walk across?’ Toshiko asked.
    Professor Len shrugged. ‘If you know what you’re doing. It can be treacherous, though. You’ve got to treat it with respect. Greendown Moss is what’s known as a floating bog: it’s basically a great raft of peat floating on a lake. It’s over fifty feet deep. It’s dangerous because, although you can walk on most of the peat quite easily, there are holes in it that you can’t see – thin patches where a person can just slip right through.’
    ‘Sounds lovely,’ said Gwen.
    ‘But what about the ghosts?’ asked Toshiko. ‘Where do they come into it?’
    ‘Ah,’ said Professor Len. ‘Local legends. A woman – a witch – is said to haunt this place. They call her Sally Blackteeth. She lurks in the ditches and drags the unsuspecting traveller down into the bog. Men, mostly, it has to be said. Pulls them all the way down to the bottom and drowns them – if they’re lucky. You can sometimes see her around these parts, wandering the Moss, looking for her next victim.’
    Gwen and Toshiko watched the thin mist rolling across the bog. In was unnaturally quiet out here – there was no traffic and all they could hear was the occasional, distant cry of the ravens in the spectral trees. Otherwise it was silent.
    ‘Let every bird sing its own note,’ whispered Professor Len, his eyes closed, listening as though he was at an opera.
    ‘What do you mean, “if they’re lucky”?’ asked Gwen loudly and clearly.
    The eyes snapped back open. ‘Sometimes Old Sally would take a man down into the bog to live with her and have her babies. Fate worse than death, that. Dunno how she did it, mind, but I guess she can do it if she’s a witch.’
    Gwen and Toshiko were both smiling at him now, amused by his earnestness. He coughed and scratched his beard fiercely. ‘Some of her victims she throws back, when she’s finished with ’em, as a warning to others – to stay away.’ He looked sideways at them and then shrugged. ‘It’s up to you if you want to believe it or not. But you’re Torchwood, so anything goes.’
    ‘We like to keep an open mind,’ nodded Gwen.
    ‘I’ve seen Sally,’ the professor said. ‘She often comes here. Water hags tend to keep to their own patch. Black Annie, who lived in the Dane Hills of Leicestershire, used to live in a cave. She dug it out herself with claws as hard as iron and decorated it with the skins of the children she ate.’
    ‘That’s nice.’
    ‘They can be vicious, but they can also be fair. They’re sometimes called grindylows in Yorkshire. There was one there who took a man to be her husband, lived in a ditch with him for two years before his wife came and asked for him back. The grindylow agreed, but said she could only have him back if she could swap him for someone else. So the wife tricked another man into the ditch and got her husband back. The grindylow changed her mind because she didn’t like the replacement, so she let him go. He went and found the wife and her husband and murdered them both in their bed out of revenge. Seemed a bit mean-spirited, that, I always thought.’
    ‘You’re full of charming stories, aren’t you?’
    ‘Oh, I know all of them. And what’s more they’re all perfectly true.’
    ‘And you say you’ve met this Sally Blackteeth person?’
    ‘Seen her. You’ve got to be careful, though. She doesn’t always look the same way twice. She’s got a bit of the bogie in her.’
    ‘Bogie?’
    ‘Shape-shifting spirits which torment menfolk. More common than you think.’
    ‘When does the Sally Blackteeth story date from?’ Toshiko asked. ‘Middle Ages?’
    ‘Oh, yeah, from right back then. But they reckon the last man to be dragged down to his death by Sally was in 1974.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘They never did find his body. It’s probably still down there, rotting away.’ Professor Len smiled and gave Gwen a nudge with his elbow. ‘Food for the worms – and